http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/opinion/finally-urgency-on-new-yorks-homeless.html?_r=0
With a title like this, one could be scrolling through the New York Times, a renowned source for news, and think that a homeless Mecca like New York is taking big steps to address the problem of homelessness. We might think to ourselves, “there is nothing to worry about, the mayor has it under control.” But if we take a better look, it seems as though the mayor hasn’t actually done much to tackle the issue. He has merely hired a new colleague to “work” on the issue. The only proposition that mayor Bill De Blasio mentions is to get a better count on the actual number of homeless individuals in New York.
Is this really necessary? Sure, it might help us get a better idea of the issue, but is this count doing anything to combat the issue? We already know that there is an abundance of homeless in New York. Sure, there are some that we can’t see, and unfortunately are not accounted for. I would see that a thorough count of homeless would be most effective in less-populated cities, those in which homeless people are very hard to notice.
Maybe this count would be a good start, but it seems that the mayor is not going to do anything beyond this count. What bothers me is they way this article is presented. Its presented in a way that shines a light on the mayor. This, to me, seems like pure rhetoric, a strategy for the mayor to get more public approval and votes. What are some ways that we can publicly question these people in power, to really “put them on the spot” to actually see what, if any, steps they are actually going to take? Is this kind of fluff used by those in power avoidable?
John and Xander- great questions and bringing this issue to the forefront. In many sociology courses I have encountered this same kind of questioning of how effective are the measures made on behalf of legislatures? I think that the homeless count on behalf of the Mayor is a legitimate initial effort. People respond to statistics and I think that by having a count this will provide the city with some numbers that might be astonishing to the general public. After doing a count, collecting and publishing the data, I think there might be an effort made by different organizations in the city as well as awareness in the U.S. This effort may be seen more on the side of NGO’s and non-profits or even through creative processes such as ethnography like we’ve seen before. I understand however the political move that this count can be making for the mayor, but beside that incentive I think something productive can result from the stats.
That’s awesome we happened to stumble across the same issue. I think this would make for a pretty interesting discussion in class.